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Unable to speak, Ann stared at the grizzled old man standing in her doorway.
“May I come in?” he asked, his voice accented enough to prove he wasn’t American.
Ann nodded and motioned him inside. “Sorry about the mess. Someone broke in.” She wiped her hands on the front of her jeans to hide their shaking.
“Is anything missing?” Concern etched the lines around Raghib’s eyes.
Ann shook her head. “Not that I’m aware of,” she said. “Uh, can I get you something to drink?”
“A glass of water?”
Ann went to the kitchen and filled a glass from the tap. “Ice?” she called toward the living room.
“Please.”
She opened the freezer. The bottle of spiced rum lay at an angle instead of tucked against the wall like it had been. She shoved it aside and shifted the ice cube trays and frozen dinners around. The finger was gone. She dropped the glass. By the grace of whatever power, it didn’t break, but water spilled all over the linoleum. Raghib appeared in the doorway.
“What’s happened?” he asked.
Ann threw a handful of paper towels onto the puddle and mopped it up with her foot. “I, um . . .” Ann ran her fingers over her eyebrow. “Butterfingers.” She shrugged and got a fresh glass, managed to get ice and water into it without dropping it, and handed it to Raghib. He drank greedily.
“How did you know to find me here?” Ann asked. “How did you know to call me at this number the other day?”
Raghib held up a hand. “Is this place secure? I mean . . .” he ducked his head and glanced around at the mess, “from listening? Did the intruder plant any bugs?”
Ann hadn’t considered that. She didn’t have a reason to. Did she?
“We can go outside.” She pulled on her jacket.
“In the back,” Raghib said. “I can’t risk being seen.”
Ann took him down the short hallway toward the rear of the house, through the laundry room and a small mudroom. Raghib followed her outside. A couple of Adirondack chairs sat on a covered patio facing an expanse of forest. A large gray cloud loomed in the west. Tiny flurries twirled in the air. Ann zipped her coat.
Raghib took full advantage of his chair, propping his legs up and everything. Ann stayed on her feet and towered over him.
“Who are you? How do you know my father? And what do you have to tell me about him?” She paused. “And how the hell did you know I was here?”
“I told you who I am.” Raghib took a deep breath. “Asim Raghib. I was very close to your father. He saved my life.” Raghib stared ahead, the daylight making his light whiskey-colored eyes glow.
Ann narrowed her eyes. “Did you leave a box on my doorstep in Salida a few days ago?”
Raghib’s face distorted and he began to cry. “It was my duty to send a box to you upon your father’s demise,” he said. “It was to be my last act for him. A promise I made to him during our last encounter. Someone attacked me and stole the box.”
“Who?” If he had a description, she had a lead.
Raghib shook his head. “It all happened so fast. I was struck from behind and knocked out. I never saw a single part of them.”
Lead gone.
Ann sat on the other chair and leaned forward, elbows on her knees. “When did you last see or talk to my dad?”
Tears followed the deep wrinkles in Raghib’s cheeks. “Many months ago.” He wiped at his face.
“Do you know what the box had in it?”
He shook his head. “It was not my place to know.”
“My father told me I could trust you.” Ann got up and paced. “The box had a message in it.” And his finger, but she didn’t tell Raghib this just yet. Who came to her house? Who stole the finger? Was it his ring they were after? Raghib showed up at a coincidental time.
“How do I know you’re really who you say you are?”
Raghib sat up. “Your father knew you would be—what is the word—skeptical.” He smiled a toothy grin. “I understand your reluctance to trust me.” He pulled out his passport from the side pocket of his cargo pants and handed it over.
She flipped to the photo page. Asim Raghib. In the flesh. “This could be forged.” She handed it back.
Raghib sighed and nodded. “He knew you’d say that, as well.” He reached toward his back, and Ann reached for her gun. Raghib held his hands up, as if she had a weapon on her hip.
“I’m reaching into my back pocket for my wallet,” he said with a nervous smile.
Ann nodded. He pulled his wallet out and produced a small photo.
“This is secondary proof.” He handed the picture to Ann. It was a photo of her dad with his arm slung around Raghib. She let out a breath and handed it back to him, then sank down onto the chair.
She turned her eyes to his. “Is my father . . . dead?”
Raghib nodded. “Sadly, it is true, but his death was no accident. He was assassinated while performing his duty as a Protector.”
“Assassinated? Do you mean murdered?” Ann asked. “Did he die here in Harmony?”
Raghib shook his head. He looked down at his hands clasped over his belly. “He died in Egypt.”
Yeah, he went to Egypt a lot. But Egypt was well outside of his protector jurisdiction by thousands of miles. What could he be protecting there?
“My father was in Egypt helping people,” Ann said, but her voice had lost its conviction when she recalled her conversation with Maggie. Maggie had used the same term, Protector, to describe Ann. And Maggie hadn’t meant because Ann was a cop.
Raghib sat up and shifted his feet to the concrete pad their chairs sat on.
“Where did he do this helping?”
“Upper Egypt,” Ann said.
“Are you familiar with the secret texts? The Nag Hammadi library?”
Ann nodded.
“The library was named after the town where it was discovered. In Upper Egypt.”
Ann sat up straighter. She hadn’t known that particular detail.
“Do you know the story of Sophia?” Raghib asked. “From the secret texts?”
“I recently learned that particular story, but what does that have to do with my dad? What was he protecting in Nag Hammadi?”
“Nag Hammadi was headquarters for an organization called the Protectorate. They were the enemies of the Messengers of the Light. It was they who tried to kill me. The ones your father saved me from. But wait.” He held up his hands in a halting gesture. “In order for any of this to make sense, I must return to the beginning.” He leaned back onto the chair and propped his feet up again.
In the beginning, Ann expected him to say.
“I am ashamed of my past,” he began. “I worked for the Messengers of the Light for many years. Not until my son’s wife gave birth to my granddaughter did I realize the way of the Messengers was all wrong.” He gazed out into the distance. “They assassinated my son and daughter-in-law for their abandonment. They would have killed my granddaughter, too, but I spirited her away to the only place I knew she would be safe—Protectorate Headquarters.”
Ann nodded and motioned for him to keep going.
“You see, the Messengers and the Protectorate used to be one organization, but differences among the leaders divided them into two factions. The Protectorate was not a malicious group. Not like the Messengers. The Protectorate was forgiving.”
Raghib had begged them to give Maggie sanctuary despite his affiliation with the Messengers. He begged their forgiveness and vowed he would never work for the Messengers again.
“Even in their distrust of me, they allowed me to swear allegiance to them.”
“How did the Messengers take your treason?” Ann asked.
“They never found out until I was gone.”
“You were a double agent.”
“Indeed. It was your father’s idea. Mr. Bram devised the most intricate, most well-thought-out plans. They never failed.”
Ann scoffed.
Sure they didn’t. And that’s why he’s dead.
She let Raghib continue.
“As part of my allegiance, I was forced to live at Protectorate Headquarters for several months. They called it rehabilitation. You see, the Messengers were cult-like in their ways. They used brainwashing techniques to ensure we were serious—devout, I think is the word?” He shook his head. “Their devotion consisted of using full sensory deprivation—pulsing white noise, blindness with black-out goggles—to torture their members into submission.”
“Shit,” Ann whispered. “I can’t imagine.” The loud ocean waves her therapist played in the waiting room was torture enough. “And you went through this . . . brainwashing?”
“Yes, when I was much younger. I do not think I would survive it now.” He took a sip of water. “It was to strip us of what we thought we knew about the world. To take us to an ignorant state, so we could be rebuilt. The Messengers believe ignorance binds us to the material world, and once we shed this ignorance we will transcend to the heavens to be with who they believe to be the one true god.”
“Yalda-whatever,” Ann said. “Right?”
“Yaldabaoth. Samael. Sakla.” He spit the last name like a curse. “The Messengers believe that in their devotion he will spare them in the End of Days when he seeks vengeance upon Pistis Sophia for banishing him to Tartaros.”
“So, was the Protectorate successful? You don’t have any loyalty to the Messengers anymore?”
“The Protectorate was thorough. They kept me under surveillance until they knew they could trust me. Once they were sure, I was allowed to become a Protector Allegiant and serve your father whenever he was in Egypt, and as his, as Mr. Bram said, feet on the street, when he was away.”
Her dad’s right-hand man, so to speak.
“He was a very passionate man, your father,” Raghib said.
Ann thought back to her dad’s desperate pleas to keep her in Harmony resulting in the fight that ultimately sealed her decision to leave. She was well aware of how passionate he could be. Passionate, stubborn, bullheaded, whatever.
“He saved my granddaughter, and in doing so, discovered who she is.” He finished off his glass of water. “Any time she cried, any time she was in distress of any kind, his blood inside his Protector necklace lit a glorious blue-white.”
She pulled the necklace from beneath her shirt.
“That is it. When filled with blood it will glow.”
Glowing blood. Ann looked at the back of her hand. “Did his veins glow?” she asked.
“Veins? No. Just the blood in the vial.” Raghib paused. “Why do you ask?”
“Mine did. A few days ago. They tingle every once in a while, too.” She stuffed the necklace back into her shirt. “I also got a mark over my heart. Like a brand.” She pulled her shirt collar aside.
Raghib sucked in a breath. “The Sa,” he whispered.
“What is this? What does it mean?”
“The Sa is the mark of the Protector. Does it hurt?”
“Not anymore. But it burned like hell when I first got it.”
“Did you see anything—any visions?”
“Nothing too concrete,” Ann said. “A silhouette of a girl and a book. The mountains here.” She gestured vaguely around them.
Raghib nodded. “And when did this happen?”
“Friday.”
“She turned seven on Friday,” Raghib said, his eyes intense. “Seven is an influential number in the Gnostic world. What time of day was it?”
Ann shrugged. “Early morning. Like three or four.” She walked to the edge of the patio.
Raghib made an affirmative sound. “Just as I thought. Your blood activated at the exact date and time she was born. The exact moment she turned seven.”
“She who?” Ann asked over her shoulder.
“My granddaughter,” Raghib said. “My Magdalene.”
Ann spun around. “Magdalene . . . ?”
“Mr. Bram called her Maggie.”
Ann’s heart triple beat, and she almost choked on her next words. “As in Maggie Hart?”
Raghib nodded. “She is who you are bound by blood and soul to protect.”
Ann fell onto the chair and gripped the arm.
“This is why you are here now,” Raghib said. “Mr. Bram told me much about you. That you are as stubborn as him—but also a realist. He said you might not return to Harmony. But you were called, were you not?”
Ann opened and closed her mouth. Was she? She certainly needed to get away from Salida, from her trauma. Harmony was the only place she thought of to go. Because of the box.
“My dad—the stuff in the box. That’s what brought me here.”
Raghib shrugged. “Your father’s plan, I assure you. He knew you might not heed the call of Sophia. The vision, Ann.”
She sat in silence, trying to let this sink in, but Raghib spoke again.
“Did she give you the book?”
Ann sighed. “She tried, but I didn’t take it. I didn’t understand why she wanted to give it to me.”
“You must keep both of them safe,” Raghib said. “The Messengers will be looking for the book. If it is in Maggie’s possession, they will hurt her to obtain it.”
“Why the hell does she have it then?”
“We could not trust anyone else.” Raghib scratched his beard. “I stole the book from them, and they learned I was working for both sides. Fortunately, this was my last duty before going into hiding. Before all of us went into hiding.” The way he said the words indicated it was a euphemism for something else.
“Why are you saying it like that?”
“The Messengers had grown in numbers and power. Our members, the Protectorate’s, were in danger. Bram devised a plan to remove us in an impermanent fashion before the Messengers could do so permanently. They’d already started killing us off, one by one.”
The Protectors had all faked their own deaths. Left their families behind without a word. Disappeared. Started over somewhere else with alternate identities.
“Even Protector Allegiants, those sworn to serve the Protectors, were told to do it.”
“That explains why Maggie believes her baba dead.”
“The Messengers started coming after the Allegiants to find the Protectors. They started targeting our spouses and our children to gain information about the Protectors, and when we didn’t give them what they wanted, they killed us, too.”
The way he spoke gave her chills, as if he had returned from the grave to tell her this.
“We did what we had to do to keep our families safe. To keep our secrets, safe. To keep the book and the passages safe. To keep Maggie . . .” he hitched in a breath, “safe.”
“Are you sure my dad didn’t fake his own death?” Her mouth went dry. She searched Raghib’s eyes. He searched hers.
“I am certain he is gone, but even if he was still alive, you would never find him.”
“I would spend the rest of my goddamn life looking for him.” She jumped to her feet again. “I have connections. I could find him.”
“Your energies are best spent in protecting what your bloodline is meant to protect.”
“If there are other Protectors, can they help me? Can I maybe call one and learn what there is to learn about this?” A sudden anger toward her father filled her. “I need information, Raghib. My dad didn’t tell me shit.” Ann paced at the edge of the concrete pad.
“They can’t help you, Ann,” he said with sad determination. “As I mentioned before, no one knows where they went, or where they are today, or if they are even still alive.”
She growled. “What the hell am I supposed to do then? Stumble through this on my own?”
Raghib stood and stopped her with raised hands.
“You must retrieve the book from Maggie. It will show you the way.”
“Enough of this cryptic bullshit.”
“I am a Protector Allegiant, nothing more. I do not understand all of the operations of the Protectorate. My duty is to act as ally. To assist the Protect—”
“I’m supposedly the only Protector not in hiding. You say it’s your duty to assist me, so assist me. What am I supposed to do?” Ann hated the frustrated desperation clinging to her voice. She turned and faced him.
“You are not just the only Protector,” he said. “You are the Protector.”
Ann’s scalp prickled. “The Protector. Not a Protector.”
“Yes.” He took in a deep breath. “Your mother and father were both Protectors. Your unique combination of genes has marked you as—for lack of a better term—The One.”
“You’re goddamn crazy,” Ann said. “The One? Like Neo in The Matrix?”
Raghib gave her a confused look.
“Never mind.” Ann unzipped her jacket and let in some of the cold air. “My mother was part of this, too?” She sat down hard on the chair. “How did I not know any of this?”
“After your birth, your mother left the Protectorate to focus her attention on you,” Raghib said. “It is Bram and Mary’s combination of genes that is the reason your veins glow, the reason for the mark over your heart.” Raghib sighed as if delivering this piece of information lifted a great weight from his shoulders.
He moved to sit but glanced at his watch. “I’ve been here too long. I must go.”
“How do I find you in case . . . in case of whatever?”
“I’m staying in room six at the Harmony B&B,” he said. “Get the book. Protect my granddaughter.”